Labourers unload emergency World Food Programme supplies at a warehouse in the town of Tahoua in northwestern Niger in July 2005. REUTERS/FINBARR O'REILLY
LONDON (AlertNet)' Aid agencies sometimes cite concerns about creating a culture of dependency on aid in disaster-hit countries as justification for withholding relief, according to a new report that says this was a key reason why the humanitarian community was slow to respond to Niger's food crisis
In fact, the report's authors say, there is scant evidence that relief undermines local initiatives in responding to crises. Rather than fretting about issues of dependency, they say, the aid world should strive to make aid less unpredictable and more dependable.
'If you did depend on relief, you'd often be dead,' said Paul Harvey, co-author of a new report by the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) of London-based think tank Overseas Development Institute.
'If people in Niger had sat on their arses, they'd be dead.'
The HPG report says aid to west Africa ' hit by drought, locusts and high food prices ' was slow to materialise because governments and aid agencies were worried that free food aid would disrupt local markets and hook people into dependency on long-term aid.
'If the need for relief is genuine, then the possible negative effect on next year's harvest is clearly a risk worth taking,' Harvey said.
Concern about aid undercutting local initiatives has been a factor in reducing relief entitlements in some cases, but he said: 'If you look at most relief in most situations where it's provided, it's not too much, with the possible exception of tsunami response.
'Disincentive effects are an argument for looking at the appropriateness of the assistance being provided, not at whether it should be provided at all. It's an argument for better, not less, relief.'
Despite the lack of evidence that people do actually become dependent on aid, the report's authors say it's hard to budge the idea, and everything negative about relief tended to get put under the label of dependency.
CATCH-ALL LABELPeople in the aid world use 'dependency' to refer to a whole raft of negative concerns about relief.
'It's a bit like chasing fireflies,' Harvey said. 'It means very different things to different people.'
Sometimes, as was the case in Niger, aid workers use the 'dependency' argument to mean that relief undermines local economies, creating the need for more aid and trapping people in a cycle of long-term dependence on outside relief.
One of the most commonly cited problems is 'dependency syndrome', where people come to expect continued assistance. Aid agencies then argue that aid undermines initiatives for people to help themselves at a personal and community level.
A third connotation of 'dependency' is the shame and defeat of long-term dependence on aid.
Occasionally, commentators refer to dependency on the relief system on the part of local or national governments, warring parties or aid agencies themselves.
Compared with debates in the West about welfare, where dependency is usually a spectre raised by right-wingers, in the aid world it's often the left-wingers who worry about food aid undermining local coping mechanisms, Harvey said.
'In emergency relief, it almost flips around. People concerned with dependency are often the people who are concerned with sustainability and empowerment.'
He said views of dependency were often linked to a belief among aid agency staff that recipients are not only lazy or uncooperative, but actively try to cheat the system.
'Crisis-hit people don't sit around waiting for aid to arrive,' he said. 'They may exploit it, but that's a different thing.'
The report's authors argue that aid is never reliable enough for people to count on it, which is part of the problem.
They also say attempts to cheat the system could be taken as evidence of not enough aid, and exploiting aid could be interpreted as a strategic effort to boost the family income.
'We encourage people to portray themselves as vulnerable in order to receive relief, so we shouldn't be surprised when people portray themselves as dependent,' Harvey said.
He added that attacks on dependency tended to come from elites ' either aid agencies or governments.
'(That) says something about attitudes to poor people.'
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Read the full report, Dependency and humanitarian relief: a critical analysis
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